Waves of Steel
by Heden
Summary: When it was over the rains came mingling with the blood of the slain and the once green grounds were washed in a faded red. To be considered AU after book 6


Disclaimer:  I don't own Harry Potter, but goodness I wish I did!  The song is "Here Comes the Flood" by Peter Gabriel.   
a/n:  This is my first attempt at a song fic, so any feedback would be greatly welcomed.  As always, personal reactions and constructive criticism are _great_.  Flames will be used to heat this wonderful 'mini' fondue pot I recently acquired.  So, hope you enjoy!   
-Waves of Steel- 

_When the night shows  
the signals grow on radios_

Robes billowed about his feet, blown by some unseen breeze as he made the trek through the streets of Hogsmead.  The white marble memorial stood shining in the dim moonlight at the far end of the street – a stone reminder that he had survived while those around him perished.  He always came at night, when there were no curious eyes to watch him, when there was no one to gawk at him.  His feet carried him to the marble base automatically, as they had on so many nights previous.  A calloused hand reached out towards the many names engraved upon the otherwise smooth marble – too many.  Fingers traced the delicate lines of each letter, as eyes closed of their own accord, drowning him in memory.

  
_All the strange things  
they come and go, as early warnings_

He should have known then that they suspected him.  His information grew steadily less valuable, and that was when he had any information at all.  That should have been his first sign.  But they had all grown too complacent; all of them were quick to believe each bit of intelligence handed to them.  To his ever lasting shame, he had let them believe – worse, he had let himself believe.

They had won in the end, if you could truly call it winning, but at what price?  Voldemort was dead, but so many others were lost, and those that survived were not the people they had once been.  Innocence was a thing of the past – dying with the children it had been so a part of.  None of them had escaped the horrible truth of war; there was no way to shelter them from the death that surrounded them, and in many cases, claimed them for its own.  

  
_Stranded starfish have no place to hide  
still waiting for the swollen Easter tide_

Picking up the pieces after that final awful battle had been one of the worst experiences of his life, this from a man with a past as dark as his spoke volumes.  Students, allies, former mentors, and 'enemies' had all died around him.  He had not lost any friends, but that was simply because he did not truly have any, they were a luxury he could not afford.  Friends were a liability.  But then, when it was all over, he had never longed for anything more in his life – a friend to share his grief with.  

He'd helped to carry the bodies of the fallen to the chosen grave sight with a care and tenderness that few had ever seen in him before.  He'd been the one to carry Hermione Granger's lifeless form to the endless row of bodies lined up along the grass for burial.  Gryffindor or Slytherin, it made no difference now – not that it ever really had.  He had watched too, the empty eyes of Ron Weasley as he lifted his fallen sister from amidst the rubble.  The Weasley family had suffered heavy casualties; Molly's worst fears had been realized.  Molly, Ron, and Fred were all that remained of the once numerous Weasley clan.

Harry Potter had survived.  He had done what he was supposed to do, he'd killed the dark lord; but he too had suffered heavily.  His eyes were filled only with sorrow behind his large glasses.  Shying away from the fame that surrounded him as always, Potter had fallen into deep fits of depression that no one seemed able to pull him out of.  After all Potter had seen, no one could really blame him.

They had all lost someone, and some part of themselves.  Albus Dumbledore had finally fallen.  The man had been the closest thing to family that he had; losing Albus had cut him more deeply than he would ever let show.

Now that it was over there was an overwhelming need for rebirth in the wizarding community.  But everyone was still too afraid to step forward and start over again.  Many death eaters were still at large, and there was the whisper of a rumor that they were reforming to attack again.  It was nonsense of course, there weren't enough of them to wreak that kind of havoc, but the discord in the wizarding community was far from a thing of the past.

_There's no point in direction we cannot  
even choose a side._

He was not sure where he stood on the matter anymore.  He had straddled the line that divided the virtuous from the wicked for most of his adult life, providing the vital link that had saved the lives of so many.  He should have felt pride in having accomplished such a feat, but an overwhelming guilt bore down upon his soul allowing little room for anything else.  He had saved lives, yes, but he had also taken them – and not only from the wicked.  His years as a loyal death eater tainted whatever honor he might otherwise have earned, and with Albus gone, there was no one to remind him of his own virtues.  
  
_I took the old track  
the hollow shoulder, across the waters_

He had retreated then, to his family's summer home on the coast of Italy in hopes of finding some peace for the summer until duty forced him to return to the halls of Hogwarts.  He had hoped that the sun and the sea air would help him forget, but his solitude only forced him to remember what had been lost.  It would be a much emptier Hogwarts that he returned to, and he would no longer be the only unsmiling face in the crowded Great Hall.  

_On the tall cliffs  
they were getting older, sons and daughters_

The children he taught had seen more than anyone ever should and he wasn't sure he could truly call them children any longer.

His fingers traced Colin Creevy's name, and he remembered clearly the look on young Dennis's face as he clung to his brother's broken body amidst the screams of the wounded.  It was a look he had seen in the mirror far too often, one that appeared only after he had come to grasp the true weight and meaning of death.  No, young as he was, Dennis was no child.

Dennis had not been the only one either; far too many Hogwarts students had been forced to grow up before their time.  Much as he had chided them for their juvenile behavior in the past, he wished now that any of his students would give him even the slightest reason to call them childish.  After the battle though, there was scarcely a laugh to be heard in the once cheery halls of Hogwarts.

_The jaded underworld was riding high  
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky  
and as the nail sunk in the cloud, the rain  
was warm and soaked the crowd._

Voldemort had been at the height of his power.  Looking back, it should have been all too obvious that he planned to attack that spring.  But, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20-20.  The signs had all pointed towards an attack on Hogwarts itself – but none of them put the pieces properly together.  

Voldemort had suspected him in the end; of that much he was sure.  The man, if he could be called a man, had fed him false information about an attack on the Bones family, and the Order had focused its attentions there.  When the Deatheaters arrived outside the gates, the Order realized its mistake too late.  

In the absence of properly trained adults, many of the students had taken up arms.  By the time the Order arrived, so many of the students were engaged in the battle – fighting over the bodies of those that had already been killed – that no one was able to remove them from the battle.  

When it was over, the rain had started – mingling with the blood of the slain – washing the once beautiful green grounds of Hogwarts in a faded red.  It had been a fitting end to an all too gruesome battle.

He remembered clearly how Draco Malfoy stood before him, with his white blonde hair plastered to his forehead from rain on one side and caked with blood on the other.  His lost eyes looking out over the Hogwarts grounds with a sort of terrible awe as the rain hid the hot tears that were streaming down his cheeks.  Draco had killed his father in the end – a final act of defiance from the boy all thought would surely end up a Deatheater – all too final for Draco who killed himself shortly after the battle.  

There was no marker for the once promising, if slightly arrogant, boy on this monument of cold marble.  The ministry had refused to add Draco's name because they said he had not been killed in the battle.  But they had not seen his face; he had been as dead as any of the bodies lying prone on the field.

He'd been buried beside the rest, however.  Minerva had made sure of that.  Draco joined his fallen classmates in a combined funeral that had gone on for hours.  There were so many to remember…

_Lord, here comes the flood  
We will say goodbye to flesh and blood_

Tears prickled at the back of his eyes as he remembered that day; and he dropped his hand from the marble monument to press his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids in an attempt to fight them back.  

Parents had come to him for assurance that their children had died quickly, with minimal suffering.  As he'd looked in the eyes of Neville Longbottom's grandmother, he hadn't been able to find the words to tell her the truth.  How could he comfort the woman when Neville had suffered as badly as his parents had at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange, if not worse?  In the end, he had simply walked away from the woman, wrapping himself tightly in the unapproachable persona he had perfected so long ago.

_If again the seas are silent  
in any still alive  
It'll be those who gave their island to survive_

He had grieved along with the rest, and he grieved still.  But he had never been one to make his emotions public, and so they thought him cold and unfeeling.  He knew better; a raging tempest whirled within him, struggling to break free and reveal a soul in torment.  Even now, though, weakness was not something he dared show – he was strong, if only for his students.  Seeing their professor so horribly unhinged would do nothing to help them overcome their own grief and regain any hope they may once have had for the future.

_Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry._

Hope.  It was a word he avoided these days.  If there had ever been a time in his life when he'd had hope he didn't remember it – and now his students had been robbed of it as well.  Loss darkened their faces and set them on edge.  Many cried at the drop of a hat, others sat stony faced.  Children no longer dreamed of achieving glory – they wanted only the peace and ignorance they had once known.  He could hardly blame them.

Even the courageous Gryffindors had difficulty picking up where they had left off before the war.  They had suffered the heaviest casualties, and he'd found Minerva sitting alone crying on more than one occasion.

And he knew how she felt; he'd often wished to give into the temptation to cry himself.  He'd lost so many of his own students – whether dead on the field or, for the Deatheaters among them, imprisoned in Azkaban.  He'd failed them, his students, his charge, his children.  

_When the flood calls  
You have no home, you have no walls  
In the thunder crash  
You're a thousand minds, within a flash_

Thunder rumbled in the distance and shook him from his reverie; it was so easy for him to lose himself in memory these days.  There was little in the present to capture his attention long enough to distract him from the haunting images of his past.  

During the war he'd been able to shelter himself from the horrible images before him when he needed to.  Now, though, there was no escaping his vivid memory.  Images of death came unbidden to his mind and tormented him through both his waking and sleeping hours.  

_Don't be afraid to cry at what you see  
The actors gone, there's only you and me  
And if we break before the dawn, they'll  
use up what we used to be._

The rain started softly, bouncing off the white marble before him, and soaking his fine black hair.  The soft pattering noises were punctuated only by the thunder and his deep breaths.  And then it rained more heavily, as though the heavens were crying the tears he could not find the strength to shed himself.  

He pressed his palm firmly against the smooth surface of the monument before him.  His pale skin blended with the white of the marble in what little moonlight was not blocked by the clouded sky.  The rain glistened off both surfaces, rolling down his fingers and the marble as though they were one.

And finally he cried.  Knees buckled beneath him, and his hand slid down the engraved surface of the monument until he found himself kneeling at its base.  He gulped for air between the sobs that wracked his body – finally free after being held back for so long.  Salty tears joined the rain water in puddles at his feet.

He cried until he had no tears left, and they were replaced by only rain.  Even then he knelt there still, before the silent reminder of all he had endured; hiccoughing and gulping for air as the rain replaced his tears completely.

_Lord, here comes the flood  
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood  
If again the seas are silent  
in any still alive  
It'll be those who gave their island to survive  
Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry._

He didn't know how long he sat there, only that he was thoroughly soaked through when he reentered Hogwarts and retired to his chambers, his fingers pruned from extended exposure to water.  Severus Snape slept soundly that night for the first time in many years – he'd finally said good bye.  

---End---

a/n:  Liked it, hated it? See that little button at the bottom?  Well c'mon then and let me know!

-Heden


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